How the Arts Transform Our Health

From cradle to grave, engaging in the arts has remarkable effects on our health and well-being. Music supports the architectural development of children’s brains. Artistic hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Dance and magic tricks build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. The arts can act just like a drug to decrease depression, stress, and pain, reducing our dependence on medication. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theater decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body, even helping us to live longer.

This isn’t sensationalism, it’s science: the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. Backed by this research, Daisy Fancourt argues that the arts―alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature―are the forgotten fifth pillar of health.

Daisy Fancourt is Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London where she heads the Social Biobehavioural Research Group, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health and UNESCO Chair in Arts & Global Health. She has published 300 scientific papers, received over £37m in research funding, and won over two dozen academic prizes. She is a multi-award-winning science communicator and has been named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and BBC New Generation Thinker. Daisy is listed as one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. She is author of the Sunday Times bestseller Art Cure, which is short-listed for the Women’s Prize for non-fiction.

This lecture is organized by Studium Generale Groningen, in collaboration with Arts in Health Groningen at the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health, and part of the kick-off of the European Culture and Health Hub funded by the European Commission.